Palamedes
Palamedes Palamedes was one of the twelve generals created by the Director. Unlike the other generals, Palamedes was not taken by the leaders of the other Free Cities and stayed in Seoul alongside the Director. Becoming the favoured son of the Director and beloved by most of his sibling's generals, Palamedes eventually rose to become Warmaster of the Great Reclamation and was seen as second only to the Director himself in power and prestige. But in spite of all of this, he was eventually corrupted and initiated the Palamedes Insurrection against the very world he helped create. History Early Life Because Palamedes never left Seoul he grew to be the most powerful among the generals as he had grown up from a child to an adult at the side of the Director. For thirty years he was the only General to have been discovered. The friendship between the Director and Palamedes grew rapidly and the Director eventually trusted him enough to give him command of the entire force of the police force. The Director had saved Palamedes’s life at the Siege of Pyongyang as they fought back to back. At another battle, Palamedes repaid this debt when he hacked the arm off a frenzied raider as it tried to choke the life out of the director at Beijing. The Great Reclamation As the Director and the Great Reclamation marched on, Palamedes proved himself to be a tactical genius. He knew precisely which force to send and where to send it, showing no mercy to those that opposed the Director but sparing the innocent from unnecessary bloodshed. As the Director departed to find and meet with rediscovered generals, Palamedes was left in temporary command of the companies and this helped prepare him for the role of Warmaster. After the Hong Kong reclamation, in which a bandit kingdom was defeated, the Director, considering the reclamation to be Palamedes' greatest victory yet, saw fit to partially transfer control of the Great Reclamation to Palamedes, raising him to the rank of Warmaster, the highest official beneath the Director himself, and granting him command over any and all police forces, as well as other rights and honours. This strained Palamedes' relationship with several general's, most notably Marduk and Andromeda, who felt either they deserved the title or simply didn't want to take orders from their brother. Titus and Sindri supported the decision simply because of duty. But Ishtar, Serra and Areus all supported Palamedes' ascension to the point where they bowed their heads and meant it, and Palamedes grew closest to these brothers. In these, the last years of the Great Reclamation, Palamedes would encourage the other generals to compete against each other to discover the strongest and most able of his companions and to improve their fighting abilities, as well as lead his forces into several notable campaigns. But despite these accomplishments, the formation of the Council of Seoul and his Father's return to Seoul created a deeply buried resentment in Palamedes that, before the Insurrection, not even he truly seemed to realize existed. The Betrayal Palamedes was wounded in battle by a blade wielded by a nomad operative. Falling unconscious, under the command of the Nomads the natives of the area helped to heal him. Having his dying body moved to the Serpent Lodge, Palamedes was soon subjected to a series of cranial injections and the nomads entered his mind. They showed Palamedes horrifying visions of the future, where the Director ruled as a god and had discarded the generals once they had outlived their usefulness. Despite realizing early on that this was a ruse, Palamedes nonetheless accepted these revelations and his bitterness towards the Director, already growing from his father's isolation and Secret Project at Seoul as well as the formation of the Council of Seoul (essentially subordinating the Primarchs to mortal humans), finally manifested in outright hostility. After his experience, Palamedes agreed to align with the Nomads to overthrow the Director, which he had become convinced was a corrupt dictator bent on achieving godhood and forsaking his sons in favour of mortal rulers. The Warmaster soon introduced these ideas to the company under his direct command, converting Marduk of the War Hounds, Ishtar of the Exquisite Hosts. Eventually, Palamedes was also able to secretly recruit Azrael Samael of the Faithless, and Andromeda of the Steel Brethren. Insurrection Palamedes moved, along with several other secretly traitor companies, to Munich, seemingly to suppress a Nomad rebellion and reinstate Free City control. Once he arrived, however, he sent down specially selected troops from all four of the companies with him, sending down all those he knew would never join him in open rebellion. Once they were on the ground he proceeded to slaughter his brothers in arms. Palamedes then redeployed his forces to Bucharest where he was met by six super soldier companies sent to bring him to Seoul to face an inquest into his actions in Munich. Four of these six companies proceeded to rebel against the Director. It now became obvious that Palamedes had massive power as he hunted down the two companies that had stayed loyal. Only a few soldiers managed to escape his forces and make it back to Seoul, and among those killed was Gauche, general of the Balck Guard. Eventually, Palamedes would mount the skull of Gauche in his throne room, where he began talking to it in private and lamenting that he must rely on psychotic generals instead of true, effective strategists like Ferrus had been. Palamedes travelled to Pyongyang to meet with the Traitor generals that had already arrived. He met Ishtar. Palamedes then met with the other general's that arrived at Pyongyang: Andromeda, Marduk and Azrael. After sacrificing 1/10th of their slaves, Palamedes ordered all move on Seoul at last. Palamedes' forces, at last, arrived in Seoul. However during the initial phases of the battle, neither he and this led to much grim speculation by Areus and others as to his true intent. Their suspicions were proven correct when hundreds of transports rushed in from the east. At the head of the armada was Palamedes himself commanding. Beset on all sides, the defences of the Seoul collapsed and Palamedes was able to strike directly. As Palamedes finally arrived in Seoul he appeared to the Director as a feral wolf, goading the Director and declaring him a tyrant and a liar. The Director refused to even respond to Palamedes in these exchanges, looking past him to instead announce his rejection of the Nomads and declaring their puppet as nothing. As the embers of his fire died, the shadows around him drew closer and closer. Palamedes' war came to its climax during the Siege. During the Siege, he was increasingly absent from direct command, something that frustrated the First Captain. Instead, Palamedes spent large amounts of time inside his Court. Palamedes swelled with power and now commanded through fear rather than charisma. Palamedes First Captain began to become disgusted with what Palamedes had become, considering him now to be little more than a slave to the Nomads. After much fighting, death and betrayal, Palamedes realised he would have to hurry his attacks to secure Seoul in time for him to set up the defences sufficiently to prevent the arrival of two loyal super soldier companies which could potentially turn the balance back in favour of the Director. To this end, Palamedes marched on the Director office alone, the loyalist forces unable to stop him. Serra, general of The Revenants, appeared before Palamedes, who offered her riches and power if he denounced his allegiance to the Director. Serra refused and attacked. Palamedes killed her and was found standing over her broken body when the Director entered the chamber. The Director and Palamedes fought with a power that would have eviscerated any mortal man dozens of times over with each blow. The Director held back for much of the battle, remembering Palamedes as his beloved son and not wishing to believe that he had turned so utterly. This allowed Palamedes to inflict crippling mortal wounds on the Director since nothing short of the Director's full power would be sufficient to defeat him. At the critical point in the battle, a lone guard entered the room. Palamedes flayed him alive with but a look and in that instant the Director realised how far his favoured son had fallen. The sacrifice of the Custodian bought the Director time to deliver a finishing blow to Palamedes. With iron resolve, he gathered his full strength and delivered a massive blow that killed Palamedes almost instantly and obliterated his very soul. In his final moments, the Director sensed his favoured son's return to sanity for a fraction of a second before he finally died. Equipment By the time of the Insurrection, Palamedes was equipped with the gigantic Maul Worldbreaker, said to be constructed by the Director’s own hands. His right arm wielded the Talon of Palamedes, a Power Claw constructed for him as a gift. Originally, he fought with a Sword and Twin-Linked rifle. Palamedes wore an enormous suit of Armour known as the Serpent's Scales.